This specification relates to search processing.
The Internet provides access to a wide variety of resources. For example, video and/or audio files, as well as web pages for particular subjects or particular news articles, are accessible over the Internet. Also, the use of mobile devices is now ubiquitous, and users may access resources from any location in which they receive wireless service.
Many users around the world, however, are faced with data limits when using their mobile devices. Not knowing how much data is consumed by various activities often leads users to drastically underutilize data services, or, alternatively, cause users to incur data access fees. In the case of the former, users will often self-restrict their uses to a few tasks such as checking email and wait until they can access Wi-Fi to accomplish other tasks that may consume more data. This leads to underutilization of data, and the data access for which the user is paying for is essentially lost.
Conversely, if a user forgets to track data usage, the user may incur significant data costs. For example, a search query may invoke an image and video search, and may require several megabytes to load on a user device (or maybe even tens of megabytes). If a user is at a data limit for a service period, the processing of such queries and serving of such resources can accumulate a significant data overage for a service period.
There are also certain data consuming actions users can choose from search results, such as watching a video or listening to an audio file. Often times, users cannot know beforehand what the data cost will be for following through with the consuming action.